Whether living for Christ, wondering who He is, or not currently interested in changing your lifestyle, you may have heard some of these phrases:
- God changes your life
- God changes your heart
- You must change to live for Jesus
- You become a new person when you follow Christ
- You must throw away the old you and live as the new you
I want to shed some light on this since I struggled to give my life to Christ for fear of losing ‘who’ I was. My fear came from the fact that I didn’t know who God or Jesus was. The Bible told me that Jesus loves me and that he paid the price for my sins. Confusion gripped me as I wondered why I had to change if Jesus loved me so much.
Before knowing if God can change us, we must first understand what it means to change.
Life and Seasons
You’re not alone if you struggle with adapting or modifying your behaviors, attitude, etc. The theme throughout the Bible shows how much God loves us. So, it’s important to note that our perspectives can deceive us if we don’t try to find the truth of who God is (more on that later).
Again, you’re not alone, and it’s okay to ask questions. So, before giving up on change because it’s unnecessary or you feel apprehensive about this ‘new’ you, the world will try to convince us that we’re okay just as we are. That is a lie.
Too much of anything can lead to unpleasant endings.
We have seasons that prove otherwise. As a pumpkin-everything lover, I know myself enough that if it were always Fall, I’d not enjoy pumpkin as much. Or, if it were always summer, think of the number of mosquitoes that would continue to populate? Remember: too much of anything can lead to unpleasant endings.
The seasons need time to revamp; as humans, we also need to adapt to the seasons of our life (i.e., we can’t behave as children if we want to keep our jobs). So if we know that we can’t be children forever, why wouldn’t we also acknowledge that our spiritual growth is essential?
New Wine, Old Wineskins
In Mark 2:21-22 AMP, Jesus explains that new wine needs new wineskins. If you sew, you’d know that repairing an old cloth with new patches will damage both pieces of material.
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk (new) cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse.”
Mark 2:21 AMP
Before accepting Christ, I was stubborn, prideful, arrogant, stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed. I didn’t know how much I needed him in my life. I saw that the world was hurting and thought it was my burden to carry. Then comes Jesus, saying that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. What would happen to me (the old me) if I accepted Jesus and became new?
Thinking of what would happen to the old me, this part of the above verse hit home: “…otherwise the patch pulls away from it the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse…” (emphasis added). If I tried to stay stubborn, it’d harm me more in the end.
Romans 8:28 states, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God doesn’t call us to change to harm us but protect us.
Viewpoint
Let’s check out some pictures, and I promise we aren’t going off on a bunny trail.
The above picture either looks like a regular-sized man stepping on tiny people or a giant stepping on normal-sized people. It would be a pretty incredible picture to capture if either were true.
I know as a child, I tried to stand on top of a water bottle, and it didn’t end well. However, I was not as tiny as the man ‘standing’ on this water bottle. Perspective is an amazing tool.
Both photos have little editing but look incredibly impossible to perform. This amusing form of photography works with perspective and object placement. By standing further than the object, we can look like we are about to step on people or stand on a bottle.
We should be careful that we don’t take our perspective as truth and lean on God even if we believe that our answers are correct. While our point of view helps create a full picture in some cases, it’s not the only piece of the puzzle.
In cases of abuse, our perspective may distort healthy discipline. This is also true with what we believe love is. In a fallen world where the devil wants to create confusion, he will take God’s good things and make false replicas: abuse is not discipline. Lust and temptation are not love.
Our perspective is important when asking if God can change us and what happens to the old self since a distorted viewpoint can cause misunderstandings of who God is.
He Is, Was, and Is to Come
While we grow, God stays the same. He is with us always and said he would never leave or forsake us (Joshua 1:5). I believe that God being who he is can cause change to occur naturally. While I struggle at times with stubborn thoughts coming to my mind, I take less arrogant actions. It didn’t happen overnight, and God didn’t force it.
The more I learned about how merciful God is and saw his grace throughout my life; I craved to become closer to him. I wanted the peace I saw in those who called him Lord. God let me know that he created me and that I was valuable enough that he sent his Son, Jesus, to the cross so God wouldn’t condemn me to the consequences of my actions (John 3:16-17). My perspective shifted when I understood the bigger picture.
We should not fear change. You won’t lose your old self when you get closer to God. Think of dropping a gold bar in the mud. The filth isn’t part of the gold bar, but it was in the environment. The gold bar never became anything less than a gold bar. It simply became the best version of itself by washing off the mud.
God doesn’t force us to change. Instead, we change naturally as we become closer to God.
A Worshipper's Devotional 